Overview for Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

We train a child to focus his mind, to concentrate, because without concentration he will not be able to cope with life. Life requires it; the mind must be able to concentrate. But the moment the mind becomes able to concentrate, it becomes less aware. Awareness means a mind that is conscious but not focused. Awareness is a consciousness of all that is happening.Meditation, and all meditation devices, can do one thing: push you away from your negative hindrances. It can bring you out of the imprisonment that is the mind, and when you have come out you will laugh. It was so easy to come out, it was right there. Only one step was needed. But we go on in a circle and the one step is always missed, the one step that can bring you to the center.You go on in a circle on the periphery, repeating the same things; somewhere the continuity must be broken. That is all that can be done by any meditation method. If the continuity is broken, if you become discontinuous with you past, then that very moment is the explosion! In that very moment you are centered, centered in your being, and then you know all that has always been yours, all that has just been awaiting you.

Osho . (Author)

Osho was born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, on 11 December 1931. Rebellious and independent from childhood, he insisted on experiencing the truth for himself rather than acquiring knowledge and beliefs given by others. He attained 'enlightenment' at 21 and went on to complete his academic studies. He spent several years teaching philosophy at the University of Jabalpur. Meanwhile, he travelled throughout India delivering talks and meeting people from all walks of life. By the 1960s, Osho had begun to develop his unique dynamic meditation techniques. He felt that modern man is so burdened with the archaic traditions of the past as well as the anxieties of modern-day living that he must go through a deep cleansing process before he can hope to discover the thought-less, relaxed state of meditation. In the early 1970s, the West first began to hear of Osho. By 1974, a commune had been established around him in Pune, and the trickle of visitors from the West soon became a flood. Osho spoke of every aspect of life and on the development of human consciousness. Based on his own existential experience rather than on intellectual understanding, he distilled the essence of what is significant to the spiritual quest of contemporary man. Osho left his body on 19 January 1990. His commune in India continues to attract thousands of international visitors who come to participate in its meditation, therapy and creative programmes or to simply experience being in a 'Buddhafield'. Osho's talks have been published in more than 600 volumes and translated into over thirty languages.